Maplestory

[pkm]

Just wondering about peoples opinions on this game whether you have played it or not. Looks pretty nicely polished for a 2D game...

[Lovestar]

It was very cute and fun however many years ago I tried it, but rapidly degenerated into not "pay 2 win", but "pay 2 be remotely playable in any way". Lost interest quickly.

Gorgeous environments/music and had that charming quality-made SNES platformer feel. Would have been a lot of fun if it wasn't such a tedious grind.

Word-of-mouth from other people is that it's kind of jumped the shark hardcore and gone off the rails in recent years, with all sorts of bizarre classes and schizoid design choices. Can't comment directly.

[Arkenaw]

Probably the "Pay 2 winniest" game I've ever seen. Don't bother honestly. The ones that don't pay use hacks.

[Lysah]

Game got a lot better for free users recently (like within the past several months). You can get pretty far without playing now that you can farm cubes and they're overhauling the enhancement system to make it free-friendly as well sometime in the near future. Some of the newer classes are also incredibly newbie friendly, like Zero that just came out a while back, which basically gets level 180 and top tier weapon entirely as part of his questline. Game is a lot better for freebies than probably anyone here remembers it, by far, only big drawback I have that stops me from playing it all day is that the community has gotten rather small, in my opinion. Bound to happen with a game this old I guess.

Also, within the past year or so Nexon has stepped up its game with events and they just throw free cash shop stuff at users now as long as you log in and play the game. Grind is not nearly as bad as it used to be, I got my Zero to 190 now in a couple of weeks without much time spent actually grinding, even the old classes can hit 150 or so with relatively little effort.

All in all I think it's worth a try for anyone, you will know pretty quickly if you like it or not. It is a very different style of RPG than what we see in the west.

[Arkenaw]

Game got a lot better for free users recently (like within the past several months). You can get pretty far without playing now that you can farm cubes and they're overhauling the enhancement system to make it free-friendly as well sometime in the near future. Some of the newer classes are also incredibly newbie friendly, like Zero that just came out a while back, which basically gets level 180 and top tier weapon entirely as part of his questline. Game is a lot better for freebies than probably anyone here remembers it, by far, only big drawback I have that stops me from playing it all day is that the community has gotten rather small, in my opinion. Bound to happen with a game this old I guess.

Also, within the past year or so Nexon has stepped up its game with events and they just throw free cash shop stuff at users now as long as you log in and play the game. Grind is not nearly as bad as it used to be, I got my Zero to 190 now in a couple of weeks without much time spent actually grinding, even the old classes can hit 150 or so with relatively little effort.

All in all I think it's worth a try for anyone, you will know pretty quickly if you like it or not. It is a very different style of RPG than what we see in the west.

Hmmm not bad. The game was honestly pretty fun, but the cash shop ruined it for me. I might give it another look actually.

[Remilia]

Yeah, they've done quite a bit to make it non fund friendly within the past few months.

Within the last half year they gave away or 3(?) free permanent pets with some time expiring meso magnet, auto pot, etc along with multi-pet item. So I have like, multiple permapets on two accounts. Also had meso magnets for each for like... 5 months cause they kept giving em.

They buffed explorer classes quite a bit, not as OP as some classes like Kaiser still but it's not bad. Explorer classes can change between their respective classes now too. So a Bishop can change class to a Archmage FnP or InL. Granted it's expensive (meso wise) cause you have to purchase mastery books again, which are no longer RNG thankfully.

I only have a 190 Bishop and 185 Kanna, so it works for what it is. Some farming are stupid long though so, =\

[Lysah]

They just gave out free job advancement coin a couple of weeks ago too during a hot time =p

[Blueobelisk]

Oh. Oh. Ask me. I know a thing or two about this topic hehehehe.

Shitty fucking game. I don't know about the recent things these people are talking about and to be very honest I haven't played in 2, 3, maybe 4 years, but the game was disgusting. The amount of money you have to put in to be competitive is horrible. I was one of the best people on my server, and eventually I just couldn't keep up. And I was spending $50 a month minimum on the game, probably more if I included my birthday/gift money. And even then I wasn't able to be top notch competitive.

The game itself is so fun and simple compared to WoW, and the chat system is much better than the trash WoW has. I also like the gameplay better (although it's very different).

Oh and I forgot to mention. Even though the people I knew who were at the very top who lived at home and spent thousands (I'm very serious) a month on the game were satisfied, it wasn't enough. There were two major problems when I left:

1. Hacking. They didn't even care about hackers. They banned the obvious ones each week but lol didn't care about the effect on the game. Worst was disconnect hack.

2. Customer support. Worst customer support ever and they'll never EVER be of help. I didn't even join WoW because I thought the game looked good. I joined because I heard Blizzard had decent customer support. Nexon is that horrible.

[DiscoGhost]

i havnt played in a couple years and i think i got pretty far. (level 75 Hermit) but it was so grindy and very 'pay 2 win.' but it looks like from others who have played more recently that its gotten much better.

[Ramaloce]

Oh! haven't seen that thing for a long time. Played it for 4 or so years when it just got out of beta and it was wonderful for those first 3 years(yeah those numbers are different) The game itself is indeed well polished for a 2d rpg plat-former. The mechanics are relatively smooth for my time there however I have a family member that still plays this game and just by watching them play it makes me glad I got out when I did. Nexon, has become basically there own version of EA to put it simply. It has gone almost the pure definition and living embodiment of pay to win. Though they recently have attempted to actually insert lore into the game they obviously have no idea how to even write a picture book let alone lore for a game. The game has also become and secondary facebook. They have there own watered down version of farmvile (which is already a watered down version of harvest moon as far as i'm concerned.), as well as drowning in other poorly implemented mini-games.

Quest design is what you would expect from an mmorpg. (delivery boy, go get x amount of this monsters drop, etc.) So it's not too bad in that regard however the quests have mostly poor in the rewards so a lot are not always worth the time investment. The ingame currency is worth less then the dirt under your character's shoe and tons of items end up being sold for the max amount you can hold which is very devastating for the economy of the game. Though you can make up for the lack of starting meso(in game currency) by simply buying it with real money with the in game "cash shop"(if the meso sack thing is still going on).

They add new classes almost as fast as sports games launch there "new" version of there games(yearly), and basically flat out refuse to do anything close to actually balancing of the classes for at least for the time I was with them. The most effective way to level for your character is the generic monster grind, and the community is quite toxic(at least when I left it was) and no matter what the map size is they will almost always want to keep the entire "map"(entire "room" of monster spawn that are separated by portals) for themselves and are as quick to demand that you leave from it one way or the other regardless of you just running through the map to get to another destination.

TL;DR: Toxic community+pay to win = not worth the time.

EDIT:

1. Hacking. They didn't even care about hackers. They banned the obvious ones each week but lol didn't care about the effect on the game. Worst was disconnect hack.

2. Customer support. Worst customer support ever and they'll never EVER be of help. I didn't even join WoW because I thought the game looked good. I joined because I heard Blizzard had decent customer support. Nexon is that horrible.

Wow. I can't believe I forgot about those, must of repressed the memories of the horrors of both those problems. I can confirm this as I was just told by my family member that for reasons that eludes me still play this game that both these problems are as bad if not worse then we remember.

[Blueobelisk]

i think i got pretty far. (level 75 Hermit)

Lol. I was level 180 Night Lord. Not bragging but level 75 isn't far at all.

To compare it to WoW it'd be like hitting level 70 or 80. You don't really see the end game content at all at that level, nor do you have any of your real abilities.

[Lysah]

Game starts at 140 for sure.

[Blueobelisk]

Wow. I can't believe I forgot about those, must of repressed the memories of the horrors of both those problems. I can confirm this as I was just told by my family member that for reasons that eludes me still play this game that both these problems are as bad if not worse then we remember.

Lol to put the customer support in perspective, if you get hacked (which happens quite often to people), it's your problem and you lose thousands of dollars worth of gear. No compensation, they won't even be of help when you send in a ticket.

Forget your password? You're fucked.

Changed emails or don't have your old one? No problem. We'll send a reset email to the email you signed up with. "But I don't have the old email anymore." That sucks for you, then. (That's personally the reason I left. Because I knew I could be hacked at any time, lose all my stuff, and couldn't even change my password or info because the email I signed up with was some bogus one I used when I was fucking 12 years old and I don't have it anymore.)

----

I'll tell you another one of the biggest problems the game had. It was fucking disconnecty as fuck. You -would- dc back in the day if you didn't run Windows XP. Windows 7 and Windows Vista people WOULD dc on bosses or certain things. They sort of fixed it but I wouldn't trust their competency for having decent servers or legit technological support for mass consumers. (People would literally log onto an old computer to do bosses, and I'd never get invited because I ran fucking Windows Vista/7.)

-----

Oh also to say how it's pay to win. You need to Hp wash to survive bosses. I'm not even talking about having competitive DPS, I'm telling you that if you don't spend money for a stupid mechanic your character will not be able to take boss damage at high levels.

[Edge-]

Lol to put the customer support in perspective, if you get hacked (which happens quite often to people), it's your problem and you lose thousands of dollars worth of gear. No compensation, they won't even be of help when you send in a ticket.

Vouch so hard. Got my account cleaned out in Vindictus a few years back (it used my throwaway credentials for F2P games and was the only account that got hit, and shortly after Nexon put in the secondary pincode, so I think the problem was on their end) and it took a year and a half to get a proper response from a CSR. Let me repeat, a year and a half. When I did get a response, they could "do nothing" to fix my account, and mailed my highest level character a bunch of free 30 day gear and a hair/makeup coupon. When I asked if they could send it to a different character as I wasn't playing my highest level character, they said they couldn't and that was that.

I refuse to ever give Nexon money again because of that bullshit.

[Alpharius]

I spent so much money on maplestory.Then I was hacked and Nexon said we don't care.

[threads]

You can have a bit of fun with it for like a week, then it gets pretty boring and repetitive. Also, don't spend any money on it.

[Ramaloce]

You need to Hp wash to survive bosses.

LOL, i remember doing that. I ended up putting 3 points into hp (not spending a single real life dime), and stacked HP gear (which i scrolled myself with 4+ 10% scrolls that actually worked on shirt and pants!) and ended up scraping by with like 1~3 hp after the big blasts at zak back before 3rd job advancement. It was hilariously painful.

[Remilia]

Oh, the 1/1 are boss abilities that even adding health wouldn't matter. Only some damage reduction buff / ability will affect it.

[jemd13]

Oh the memories D:... The game is pretty shitty right now, they fucked it up a little while after Nexon took over. I played since beta and nostalgia hits me hard sometimes haha, I did have lots of fun with that game, but I don't think it's worth it now you can play it for nostalgia for like a week and then get bored and noticing that everytime you play it, it gets shittier.

For a new player, you might last longer before getting bored just because there are lots of classes and the world is big, but like someone above said, it's one of the "pay to winniest" games out there... You can always try a private server or something, I played in one of those a while back and actually had fun because you didn't need real money

[pkm]

Legion has burned me out hard and now I'm looking for other games again.

Anyone playing maplestory now days? How is the game now? Last I played it was still very much pay 2 win.